at Boston and
goes to England. He simply disappears. Consequently within twenty-four
hours suspicion is aroused, within forty-eight anxiety is felt, and in
the course of three or four days a hue and cry is sent over the whole
country. It goes to England, of course, by telegraph, and when the
steamers arrive a prying, mousing gentleman, whose business it is to
find out things for the New York press, visits them one by one, passes
the passengers under inspection, and of course finds Mr. Hall,
spectacles and all. It is strange that a man of Mr. Hall's experience of
the world, a criminal lawyer, an ex-mayor, a political associate of
Tweed, Sweeney, and Connelly, should not have seen that such would be
the inevitable course of events if he should leave New York as he did.
But how natural for him to say that he was called East, or West, or
South by important business which would keep him away ten days or a
fortnight, to provide his family and his clerk with that response to
inquiries, even if the former suspected the true state of the case, and
then to start for England. True enough, in the end his flight would be
known, which was inevitable; but he would have had a full fortnight's
start, and would have been comfortably on the continent or hidden in the
wilderness of London, probably the best place in the world for the
concealment of a fugitive person who is not very singular in appearance
and in habits, and who is not known at all to the London police. Mr.
Hall might, with a little forethought, have so arranged his affairs that
he would have been out of reach and past recognition before suspicion
was aroused, not to say before a hue and cry was raised. But as it was,
this astute lawyer, this crafty politician, who has been familiar with
the ways of tricky people all his life, who knows by constant
intercourse with them the habits of men that fly and men that pursue,
who is practically acquainted with journalism, does just what defeats
his purpose--whatever was the occasion of his leaving New York so
suddenly, as to which we say nothing.

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